LOOKING FOR THE BLESSED HOPE AND GLORIOUS APPEARING OF OUR GREAT GOD AND SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST (TITUS 2:13)

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

SYRIA IN
THE CROSSHAIRS

At
the beginning of the Lybia campaign, I told a friend of mine “Syria is next”. He laughed.
The Arab Spring was spreading through North Africa and, to a lesser
extent, popping up here and there in the Arabian Peninsula. But, Syria? Really?
It was not like Bashar Assad did not have experience putting down
dissent. One could say that it was in
his genes. All I could do was to mention
the prophecy of Isaiah 17:1, Behold, Damascus will cease
frombeinga
city,and it
will be a ruinous heap.

Where do we stand
today? It is pretty much generally
accepted that Assad’s days are numbered and that we are watching the closing
scenes of this play. Back in mid
December, U.K.
Foreign Secretary William Hague and U.S. President Barack Obama indicated that Syria would be crossing a line
if it used chemical weapons and that foreign intervention in the civil war may
follow. Very soon after this statement, activists
started posting videos purportedly showing that
Assad was indeed using chemical weapons on his own people. On Christmas Eve, Al Jazeera reported that seven people had died in Homs, and scores of
others had been affected, after they
inhaled an unidentified "poisonous
gas" used by government forces. PM
Netanyahu has stated that Israel is closely monitoring the developments in
Syria. And this morning, Israel National News has
reported that a MiG-21 aircraft, flown
by Syrian pilot col. Hassan
Hamada who defected to Jordan in June, had
been upgraded to carry chemical weapons and to fly without a pilot. US experts believe that Russian engineers
helped convert the plane and that additional Syrian aircraft have undergone the
same transformation.

Syria has become the focus of interest for Moscow. Russian
Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, announced a couple of days ago that Russia was
helping Syria keep control of its chemical and biological weapons
arsenals. That statement was probably
meant as a deterrent for Israeli or NATO
military action to seize control of
those wmd’s. It was also a warning to
the West not to intervene in the removal of Assad, either by direct action or
by helping the rebels. At the same time, Russian
military advisers are manning some ofSyria's more sophisticated
air defenses. Russia has delivered
Buk-M2 and Pantsyr-S1 mobile missile launch and radar systems to Syria, while
the delivery of modern long-range S-300 has not been confirmed. And, while Syria’s air defense command comprises
two divisions and an estimated 50,000 troops – twice the size Gaddafi's force –,
sources familiar with the Moscow-Damascus defense relationship confirmed the
presence of Russian air-defense crews inside Syria. This may help explain why a US-led
intervention – predicted as imminent for more than a year- has failed to
materialize.

But Moscow
is not the only one interested in the events unfolding in Syria. Teheran is actively working to continue the
Syrian war while maintaining its grip on the country. Debkafiles has recently reported that Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameinei has issued directives to the commander of Iran’s
external intelligence and terrorist arm, for perpetuating the Syrian conflict
by means of a terrorist network spread across the country, operating in conjunction
with local militias. That is the tactic
that has been used in Afghanistan, where President Karzai resides in a
fortified palace, and Iraq with PM Nouri hiding in Baghdad’s Green Zone.

What is
likely to happen in Syria? Saudi
intelligence worries that Bashar Assad will pretty soon give the order to
launch chemical and biological weapons against the insurgency and some of Syria’s
neighbors. At this point all bets will be
off. Israel will act, and so will the US
in spite of the present Commander-in Chief.
In this context, it is easy to
see the prophecy of Isaiah 17 being fulfilled and Damascus becoming a ruinous heap. It is worth noticing that Damascus is one of
the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Though it has been attacked and conquered, it
has never been completely destroyed. It has never been left uninhabited, but there
is one more prophecy regarding Damascus.
In the Judgment on Damascus, we read therefore her young men shall fall in her
streets,and all the men of war shall be cut off in that day,” says the Lord of hosts.“I will kindle a fire in the wall of
Damascus,and it shall consume the palaces of
Ben-Hadad” (Jer. 49:26-27).